Rose peeks into my cup. “Water, Sia? Really?”
“I don’t feel like drinking. It makes me tired. Besides, I’m driving us home.”
“I’m having one shot. With Samara.” Sam’s a few feet away now, pouring said shots, I assume.
“A shot of what?”
“Tequila.”
“Girl,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re trouble tonight.”
“I’m trouble every night.” She punches my shoulder playfully.
Samara brings the shots over. “Sia’s not drinking,” Rose says. “She’s the designated driver.”
“That’s valid,” Sam says. She and Rose throw their glasses back and cough and scream.
“Looks like I’m missing out on a lot of fun,” I say dryly.
“Hey,” Sam says as the doors open. “Looks like the Chicanos are here.”
I glance around and see Rita and all her brothers, Nacho, and Lupita, along with Manuel, Jonathan, and a few of their cousins pouring in. “Thank the Lord,” I say.
Within minutes, some reggaeton/merengue mix is blazing on the speakers. “That’s more like it,” Rose yells.
Manuel approaches. “Baila conmigo,” he says, gesturing to me.
“No,” I say.
“For old time’s sake, Artemisia?” He smiles.
I sigh. “Fine. But only because it’s a good song.” He takes my hand to what is now the dance floor and twirls me around.
Truthfully, the only reason I dance with Manuel is because we learned how—with a partner, I mean—together at the parties our moms used to throw. And because he’s respectful, unlike his dick cousin Hector, whose hands always make their way to my ass.
“Aprendí un poco del tango,” Manuel shouts over the music.
“Tango,” I repeat. “Show me.”
“Hold on.” He goes to the music player. “We need a different song.”
I nod. He puts on something slow and sultry and pulls me close to him, grabbing my hand. He slings his arm around my waist and I automatically place my hand on his shoulder.
“Damn, Manuel,” I say. “Lay off the cologne, would you?”
He ignores me. “Camina,” he says, and talks long strides forward. I follow his lead easily, stretching my legs back. He turns me suddenly and we switch directions. I lead now. “Straighten your back,” he says. “You gotta look down on everyone. Like they’re your servants.” I lift my head and narrow my eyes. “There you go,” he says.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Push your whole leg straight, to the side, like that. Now drag your heel in very slow.” I do what he’s saying, keeping my queenly posture.
“Muy bien. So, the song’s gonna slow down in a few beats. I’m going to grab your leg up, and you need to lean back.”
“Don’t get handsy,” I warn. He nods. I can hear the song about to slow, and he pulls my knee all the way up to the side of his torso. His hand is on my back and I bend backward to a few claps of a drum solo, holding my arm out. He lifts me fast, drops my leg. People clap and cheer for us and he grins.
“You like that?” he asks me as he gives a bow to our audience.
“Not bad,” I say. He gestures to me and people whistle. I wave them off. Someone puts on a cumbia and we take our usual footwork as the dance floor fills.
“Rose still single?” he asks as he turns me around.
“Yep.”
“Her papá still—”
“Religious? Yep.”
He laughs. “Too bad. How’s your papá?”
“He’s good. Working a lot.”
“I see him in the bosque de nopales when I’m driving out to Lupe’s, tagging shit.”
“Yeah. He’s still studying that whole ecosystem out there.”
Hector taps his back. “Can I cut in?”
I shake my head. “Hell, no, Hector.”
“Aw, mami, you still mad about the last time? That was, what, over a year ago?”
I give him the finger. “Manuel, tell your mom I miss her.”
I look for Rose, stopping when I see her and Samara snuggled in a corner. The way they’re looking at each other, you know, in that way that a best friend ought to know about long before now, right? Maybe I’m just imagining it, though. Frowning, I cut out the back door.
28
WHEN MAMI TAUGHT ME TO dance, she did it with a broom and a Selena CD. “You got to shake your hips like this, Sia. No, no, not like that. You look like you ate too much chile, woman!”
“You’re asking me to do the impossible, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. “If I moved my hips any harder, they’d fly off!”
Mom just sat me down for a minute while “Techno Cumbia” finished its last notes. “I think you need to grow hips,” she said.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Oh, hush. You know what I mean.” She leaned against the back of the sofa. Back then, we covered everything in bright tapestries, stuff Abuela picked up from Juárez. Our home looked like we let a rainbow Mexican unicorn decorate it. “Our ancestors, before the Spaniards came, I mean. We had rich dancing. Rico. It was the sort of dancing that made the seeds germinate, made the corn plump, made babies.”
“It was the sort of dancing that made babies?” I scoffed. “That’s disgusting.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, and it’s gross.”
She laughed and stood. “Again.”
I spun in a circle until I got dizzy. “There, Mami, now the corn should be ready!” I spun again. “Oh, look, I’m pregnant!”
Mom laughed so hard, she cried. When Dad got home and he heard my jokes, he didn’t find it so funny. “No puedes tener un bebé hasta que obtengas tu doctorado,” he said, pointing his finger at my belly.
Mom was right, though. I couldn’t move right until I grew hips, which didn’t come until after she was gone. She never got to see.
29
IT’S COOL OUT, WHICH FEELS nice after all that tango. Only a handful of kids stand around smoking out. We’re all lit with the dim glow of fairy lights strung up on the deck. I take a seat on a bench and stretch my legs out. I like the view. The light of the stars is like cake sugar.
“Can I sit here?”
I gasp, turning to glare at the Hulk-like form of Noah. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he adds quickly.
I wave my hand at the bench and he sits. “How are you doing, Sia?”
“Not bad,” I say. “It’s not the worst party ever.”
He nods. “You go to parties a lot?”
“Almost never, actually.”
He nods again, randomly snapping his fingers, out of nervousness, maybe. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
I pause. “Which dance?”
“The slow one. Where that guy bent you really low—”
“Oh, that. He was teaching me that one just now.”
He stares. “You just learned that? That thing with the leg? Tonight?”
“Well, Manuel’s a good partner,” I say. “He and I, we’ve been dancing forever, it seems.”